GARY Cahill has set his sights on being a first-choice regular in a Villa shirt by the time they visit Liverpool next season.

GARY Cahill has set his sights on being a first-choice regular in a Villa shirt by the time they visit Liverpool next season.

The 20-year-old centre-back produced another confident performance at Anfield after an early mistake allowed Fernando Morientes to turn him in the penalty area and fire Liverpool into the lead.

Cahill is out of contract in 12 months but is being given a run by manager David O'Leary in a bid to convince him his future lies at Villa Park. And it would appear to be a positive sign that the player is looking ahead long-term.

His 90 minutes at Anfield was his fifth straight start since making his debut in the heavy defeat at Arsenal. He said after the defeat: "I will learn from this and from all the games in the last few weeks.

"I've only had a handful of first-team games and every week you come up against quality strikers and different types of strikers. I want to push on from my run at the end of the season and learn quickly. When we're back at Anfield next season, I want to be a regular in the side and I want to keep a clean sheet.

"It's no good just getting this experience, what I have to do is learn from it and become a better player. That goes for all the young players here. We know you have to develop quickly to do well at this level and now it's up to us to show we can."

Cahill said Villa could have produced a shock at Anfield had Gabby Agbonlahor taken his chance at 1-1.

He reflected: "We didn't get off to the best of starts and I know I could have done better for the Morientes goal, but you have to pick yourself up and carry on.

"We felt there was a chance at half-time and I think we deserved to be level when Gareth Barry scored. Gabby could have scored another for us almost straight away and the game might have been totally different if he had.

"But then we let ourselves down for the second goal. That was down to people not picking up a run from the edge of the box."